The Whippet Handbook - Giving the Early and Contemporary History of the Breed, Its Show Career, Its Points and Breeding (a Vintage Dog Books Breed Cla

By W. Lewis Renwick

"The Author of this book, Mr W. Lewis Renwick, who is the leading authority on the Whippet, has given us here a new angle on the evolution of this popular breed, which is bound to interest all dog lovers. It is also felt certain that his experience, which is gained by over fifty years as Breeder, Exhibitor and Judge, will be of great help to the novice and of interest to all who keep dogs and especially to those who have dogs of the Coursing Breeds. The book itself, while dealing with every up-to-date facet of the Whippet world is rich in historical allusions, and well illustrated with portraits of past and present examples of the breed." Contents Include ORIGIN AND HISTORY: A Miniature Greyhound Whippet Racing Whippet Coursing. EARLY AND CONTEMPORARY SHOW DOGS: Pillars of the Breed Well-Known Prefixes. THE STANDARD: The American Standard Notes on Conformation. BREEDING: Importance of Pedigree Some Important Pedigrees The Litter Dew Claws Some Further Thoughts on Breeding. FEEDING: Puppy Feeding Adult Feeding. EXHIBITING: Getting Ready Sow Procedure Classes Definitions of Classes. BREED CLUBS AND THEIR SECRETARIES GLOSSARY AND TERMS

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Nov 15, 2011
• ISBN: 9781446549919

Book preview

Jones.

CHAPTER I

ORIGIN AND HISTORY

In shapes and forms of dogges; of which there are but two sorts that are usefull for man’s profit, which two are the mastiffe and the little whippet, or house dogge; all the rest are for pleasure and recreation

—JOHN TAYLOR, the Water Poet, 1630.

LITTLE seems to be known to-day of the origin of the Whippet, the little race and coursing dog that up to the advent of Greyhound racing, held such a vast following of sportsmen, who raced the Whippet on tracks all over the British countryside. I stress the word ‘raced’, for Whippet rabbit coursing had died out as a so-called sport before the era of Greyhound racing, which Was to become such a furore in the years between the First and Second World Wars.

There are many who claim the Whippet is a Greyhound cross and that the Terrier, Greyhound and Italian Greyhound were used to make the Whippet breed. Mr. Frederick Freeman Lloyd in his book The Whippet and Race-Dog, 1894, asks us ‘What’s a Whippet?’ and answers ‘Why, he’s a little race dog, a dog that is calculated to gallop 200 yards at a terrific speed’. Freeman Lloyd states the Whippet ‘was originally produced by a cross between the Greyhound and Terrier; in the old days of rabbit coursing in the North of England, English and the other Terriers were used for this pastime’. He also states that he could remember Whippets known as Whippets for twenty-five years, which means that in the late 1860’s we have definite information that Whippets were bred for racing and for the coursing of rabbits.

F. C. Hignett writing in 1907 says: ‘The Whippet existed as a separate breed long before dog shows were thought of and at a time when pedigrees were not officially preserved; but it is very certain that the greyhound had a share in his genealogical history’.

Recently, that recorder of all things pertaining to the show Whippet, Mr. Bernard S. Fitter, in his The Show and Working Whippet, 1947, and other writings subscribes to the Greyhound cross theory.

Let us admit, therefore, that the evidence produced in the only books written exclusively on the breed subscribe to the Greyhound-Terrier cross theory; and that if you question a hundred Whippet folk to-day on this subject you will receive from ninety-nine of them the same answer as that given by the three experts I have quoted. However, I do not think that this evidence is strong enough to establish this claim: it seems such an easy way to get the answer, for it is obvious that a Whippet is of Greyhound type (it is just as obvious that the Italian Greyhound is of Greyhound type too) but I can see nothing in the Whippet that points to a Terrier’s conformation.

I will go further back in trying to find out the origin of the breed. It is certain that through the centuries dogs have been kept by man, and the very great majority of them have been kept for hunting. Dogs of the Greyhound type have been depicted by artists for thousands of years, and the Greyhounds of the East, the Saluki, Afghan and so on, have definitely existed as hunting dogs through the ages. ‘The Greyhound is the oldest and most conservative of all dogs and his type has altered singularly little during seven thousand years,’ said Mr. Fred Gresham when writing at the beginning of the twentieth century in Everybody’s Book of the Dog, his now scarce little sixpenny vade-mecum. References to the Greyhound are found far back in the ages, even before the Assyrian artists painted him . . . he was generally depicted racing after game. The Egyptians appreciated him before the Pyramids were built, and in Proverbs xxx. 31, King Solomon referred to him as one of the few things which ‘go well, yea, four are comely in going: a lion which is strongest among beasts, and turneth not away from any; a greyhound; an he-goat also; and a king against whom there is no rising up’.

A MINIATURE GREYHOUND

If you study ancient Greek works of art you will find dogs of the Greyhound type introduced because of their graceful conformation; and in European art of the Middle Ages dogs of this type are largely represented. If you study these works of art you are bound to be struck by the similarity of the dogs of those days to the Greyhound type of to-day, and except for the fact that some have long hair (the Afghan and the Saluki) while others are of the short-haired variety like our own Greyhound, allowing the artists some latitude, they seem to be one and the same breed as the modern coursing dogs of the East and Europe. Then again there are dogs depicted in the same pictures of different sizes, and running with the large Hounds are small Hounds of identical make and shape.

Thus I am forced to the conclusion that the only real evidence we have of the origin of our Whippet is to be found in these old works of art. All this points to the fact that these were ‘bantamised’ Hounds and the Whippet, in my opinion, is a ‘bantamised’ Greyhound or a Greyhound bred down in size.

If my conclusions are right and no one can say for certain, then how does this Greyhound-Terrier cross come into the question? To me the answer is a simple one. As civilization progressed and the feeding of the people, especially those who lived in towns and hamlets, became easier, the need of dogs to hunt for food decreased, but the love of dogs would still be strong. The result was that the women especially would like to have dogs about and it is only natural that the smaller varieties would be more popular to have about the home—in consequence of this the smaller or miniature ones would be kept quite as much as the larger types who were popular as hunters and sporting dogs.

When in the nineteenth century the sport of Whippet racing became popular, the miners and other devotees of the North, found that some of these little Greyhounds lacked the ‘guts’ to run a race or course out to the end, and that when crossed with a Terrier, the courage of the resulting progeny was improved. This influx of Terrier blood was sparingly used otherwise the Whippet would soon have changed in shape and lost speed in consequence.

Plate I

The Small Rabbit Greyhound, from an engraving by Henry Roberts in 1749.

Canis Dog Features

(right) The Whippet, from an engraving by F. Chereau about 1790.

(below) The British Whippet of the 1880’s, after Gordon Stables.

Canis Dog Features

Plate II

Mr. J. J. Fothergill’s

Tregear Mystery in 1901.

Mr. Ernest Sobey’s

Senora in 1907.

I have been breeding Whippets for some fifty years and have never bred one with an open coat—another factor which I think discounts the Terrier cross except as a localized experiment, for surely if the Whippet was a comparatively modern cross-breed, specimens throwing back to the Terrier would be found from time to time in litters. I have not seen